As the new calendar year begins, let me get the rhetoric going with a question. What’s the biggest challenge India faces today? Is the news that we see every day defining it? Or must we look beyond, into what we don’t see? Is it the challenge from a fast-souring relationship with Bangladesh, an already-soured relationship with Pakistan, or is it the one that ferments slowly in a large pot with China and its geopolitical intent? Is it the fast depreciating relationship between the rupee and the dollar? Is it that long, unresolved and contentious issue of tariffs between the US and India that’s been troubling us for a while now? Well, this is what we see.
And what is it that we don’t see enough of? I believe there is a big one. We hear of it now and then, and we push it under the carpet of comfort. The big four-letter issue in our midst today is jobs. The lack of enough jobs for a whole nation of hungry and aspirational job seekers. An entire country of educated people, well nigh the size of one of our bigger cities, are on the daily active lookout for jobs that seem to be elusive, if not entirely missing. That’s the volume dimension. Add to it the fact that all of them are looking for a full day’s work. That’s depth of work. And every one of them is looking for work that matches what they bring to the table as a competency. In the mismatch of these many dimensions lies the gory story of missing jobs.
Current government numbers tell a different tale though. A really big number of 17 crore new jobs were created between 2017 and 2024, as per the Niti Aayog. These numbers can’t be wrong, but seem woefully inadequate when compared to the current need for bigger numbers, and more importantly, the addition to this demand-number every passing year as graduates pass out from our very many educational institutions. At last count, those joining the job market every year exceeded 1.5 crore young people.
In the market for jobs, there is the existing job. The central government and every state government have a standard set of jobs. Each is filled with typically small and incremental vacancies that arise every year. The number of applicants for every job announced is mind-boggling. The Railway Recruitment Board had 64,197 vacancies announced in 2025. Over 1.87 crore candidates applied.
While a fair number of these jobs exist in the government sector, a very robust number of private sector jobs exist as well. Out here, water finds its own level. As corporate business grows, investment grows. Every new investment creates many new jobs. Well, that is the way it should go. If one does, however, peek into the investment mindset of Indian business today, one witnesses a rather lethargic wait-and-watch sentiment. This sentiment has been worsened within export-oriented businesses that have been delivered a sucker punch with the Trump tariff at hand. Add to it the role of artificial intelligence in bringing in non-human agents as colleagues into the work environment, and the cocktail of depression is complete.
There are traditional jobs of the brick-and-mortar kind, and then there are the new-age jobs. There are jobs that demand expending physical energy as opposed to exercising the mind. And now there are the gigs. Gigs are not really jobs. They are defined more as entrepreneurships where the performer of the task is the owner.
There is a gig worker in each of our lives. You get your grocery delivered by a gig worker, your cab to the airport is driven by an owner-partner gig worker, and there are dozens of other gig categories in India. The gig economy was estimated to be as large as 77 lakh people in 2020-21 doing their own thing and writing their own salary cheques based on how many days they work and how many hours they choose to work across those days. The gig and platform economy is the new work-buzz in India, one that has made livelihoods happen for a whole host of people looking to work and make their lives happen. This economy is slated to grow by a multiple of three by 2029-30. It’s an arena of robust growth.
But even as I write this, there is tumult out here. Gig workers of Zomato and Swiggy, to name just two platforms, have threatened to strike work on crucial big delivery days. The peak Christmas and New Year season was chosen to showcase their demands. A whole bunch of delivery-partners were stopped from doing their jobs and a fair bit of chaos ensued. The political classes of both the ‘champagne’ and ‘toddy’ socialite kind have jumped into the fray supporting the needs, desires and aspirations of grocery and food delivery workers.
As the fire rages on that count, let me quickly jump to a thought that is rather important to flag. The point is a simple one. Were we ever meant to work for others? Were we meant to sell our time to employers? Or is there an older model of work, possibly a pre-British-era format where everyone worked for himself or herself? Were we meant to be in regimented jobs? Or were we meant to work in our own fields to grow food that was important for our lives? Were we meant to sell the excess through a spirit of direct entrepreneurship, either through a retail outlet of our own, or through a process of 1:1 buyer-seller connect? Are we meant to be doing our own thing really?
The gig-economy today comes closest to this model of work. As India grapples with the issue of not enough jobs for all, must we abolish the thought of jobs itself? Must we go back to become the entrepreneurs each one of us is meant to be? Must we debunk the thought of industrial society that brings in factory workers that work for the collective good of the factory owner? Must we work for others at all? Or must we work for ourselves and maybe offer jobs to a small number in the ecosystem who we can touch with a benign job that trains for a short while and then unleashes them into entrepreneurships?
India today equally grapples with issues that relate to the volume of employment and the quality of employment on offer. Must we then look at a reverse movement in the jobs mindset of our people? Must we go back to an era of working for ourselves? Must that be something we teach in our schools, for a start?
Harish Bijoor | Brand guru & founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc
(Views are personal)
(harishbijoor@hotmail.com)